His turn to speak

Saturday

Oct 30, 2010 at 12:01 AM

STOCKTON - For nearly two years, he was known only as Kyle R., a 16-year-old boy who escaped captivity in a Tracy home wearing an ankle chain and boxers. Stories emerged that his captors starved, cut and beat him.

Scott Smith

STOCKTON - For nearly two years, he was known only as Kyle R., a 16-year-old boy who escaped captivity in a Tracy home wearing an ankle chain and boxers. Stories emerged that his captors starved, cut and beat him.

On Friday, he stepped into the witness stand, a sturdy 6-foot-2 18-year-old weighing 250 pounds. Identified now as Kyle Ramirez, he spoke clearly. With a boyish face, he smiled and joked during court breaks.

But his demeanor changed as he testified about his version of the horror endured inside the Tennis Lane home.

And when the prosecutor asked, Kyle gestured across the courtroom to Anthony Waiters, 31, who wore a gray suit, testifying that the neighbor took part in abuse that made some jurors shake their heads.

In one episode, Kyle described Waiters and two others pinning down his right arm on a coffee table. Waiters retrieved a knife and cut him, Kyle said.

"He was grinding the knife back and forth," Kyle testified, adding that they next dressed the open wound with butter, salt and bleach before wrapping it with clear tape.

Waiters and three others were arrested in the days after Dec. 1, 2008, when Kyle - then a 5-foot-8, wounded and soot-covered 100-pound teenager - bounded from a trampoline over the back sound wall of the Tracy home seeking help at a nearby sports club.

He testified of being chained to a coffee table and forced to sleep inside the home's empty fireplace.

Along with Waiters, Michael Schumacher; his wife, Kelly Lau; and Kyle's onetime caretaker, Carén Ramirez were arrested. All but Waiters took plea deals early this month for 30 or more years in prison.

San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Angela Hayes first asked Kyle to describe the abuse. He said most of it came from Ramirez and Lau. Schumacher was seldom home.

Kyle said Waiters, who visited two or three times a week, also took an active role. Waiters brought over a baseball bat, Kyle said.

"Sometimes, I got hit so hard I couldn't use the body part," Kyle said.

He said that Waiters, a bulky 6-foot-tall ex-football coach, once punched Kyle with a boxing glove, which knocked him unconscious.

With Ramirez and Lau, Waiters put Super Glue and hot wax in open gashes on Kyle's scalp, he said.

On Thanksgiving 2008, Waiters poured Kingsford lighter fluid on Kyle's pajama pants and lit them on fire, which Kyle said he quickly fanned out with his hand. The others stood back and laughed, Kyle said.

When his turn came, Waiters' defense attorney, Allan Jose, questioned Kyle, trying to reveal exaggerations and mixed-up facts in the stories he told investigators and doctors who treated him.

He questioned why Kyle would initially tell police two masked Latino men with heavy accents abducted him. Kyle responded that he feared threats from his four captors that they would find and punish him.

Jose forced Kyle to admit that there may have been another bat in the Schumacher-Lau home other than the one Kyle said Waiters brought over. Kyle said he did his best to recall the facts, but some dates and figures were wrong.

"I choose not to remember it," Kyle responded. "Play-by-play, I just don't know."

Kyle told the prosecutor that in the four months he was chained to a living room coffee table, he was never set free. Yet, under questioning from Jose, he admitted he had been released a few times to help with chores.

Jose asked Kyle if he could remember when Waiters used the bat on him.

"I don't know the dates he hit me," Kyle said. "But it did happen."

Again being questioned by the prosecution, Hayes asked Kyle to hold up his arms to show the scars, as if revealing irrefutable evidence of the abuse. Some of the scars were visible from the back of the courtroom.

San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Terrence Van Oss ordered the jurors to return Wednesday, when the trial will resume.